I was actually working on an extension very similar to yours yesterday and then I found this website. My extension is simpler than yours right now, but though you might find my design useful to better yours.

First, why not simply for each session under the main SessionSaver have a subfolder for every session stored and in each of the session folders just separately add bookmarks for each tab, instead of concatenating them together. This has an advantage that each the user can just open up their SessionSaver folder, browse sessions, delete sessions, and open sessions (middle click folder) using the default chrome bookmark UI. This means less clicks and a more familiar interface, and has the advantage of if the users sync bookmarks, they can go online through google docs anywhere in the world and grab the links to their stored sessions, without needed chrome or your extension installed. [basically a fancy synced bookmark all tabs extension serves as a great session manager]

Also, you don't seem to preserve the parent window for each tab. While it's debatable if the tabs should be restored on the windows they were originally on, it would make a nice option.

(Also, I keep losing sessions with you extension, not sure the bug causing it)

You've made a nice extension, but there are parts of your design that seem like reinventing the wheel to me.

If anybody is interested in my method, let me know, and I might clean the code up a bit and release it.

08-19-2009, 06:24 PM

sulasno

post your extension and I will try it

08-19-2009, 08:27 PM

jw12345

Sure thing, it'll be a few hours probably before I can get to my computer it's on (it's a small extension, only maybe 50-60 lines of script because all it does really is save your tabs on a special folder and let the native ui do the rest)

08-19-2009, 09:30 PM

jw12345

Here's the source and compiled extension. As long as nobody tries anything weird, it should work alright, although the source code is hideous. Somebody may find it useful, even if only as a bookmark all tabs deal.

Note: the sessions are stored in the other bookmarks->your saved sessions folder

08-19-2009, 11:29 PM

sulasno

Id: hifhfaclldppbmpkcnialbkjmhmbjlkl
The first extension that I made.
Version: 1.0

suggest you start a new thread on your extension
one comment though;
remove the Save Session and show only the diskette on the toolstrip

08-20-2009, 12:14 AM

StevePaul

@twin

It might prove to be of benefit to others if you were to put a link to your extension in your signature ...

08-20-2009, 03:48 AM

twinsen

My extension ended up the way it was, because the first extension I found to store data was Sticky Notes, so I used the same technique it uses (cookies) until I found problems with them (they don't flush on exit and they only can store about 4k) so I started storing the same data in a bookmark. The gui ended up the way it was because extensions tool strips didn't have context menus. If I can get the performance the same I might swap to the one url per bookmark.

The features in the next planned release do help preserve the window they were on.

08-20-2009, 03:58 AM

arsieiuni

Hey there!

First, thanks so much for this extension! I have been missing this feature from Firefox like woah!
But here is my feedback so far from testing it for you:

OS: Vista XP 64 Home Prem
Chrome: Dev 4 (latest as of 8-19-09)

So I set up two project window sets. One set had all the tabs relating to my recent chrome development research. The other had four tabs relating to another project I was working on called gtan. So I saved the first set of tabs as "Chrome Project" and the second set as "Gtan". I closed both, opened a fresh Chrome window and hit load Gtan. It loaded all the windows, not just the Gtan windows. Same result with trying to load only the Chrome.

I realize what I was expecting, why I expected it, and why it wouldn't happen in Chrome as it did in Firefox.
In firefox, I would have been essentially running two separate windows with a set of tabs in each. In Chrome, I'm still running one chrome window with as many tabs just arranged how I like.

So Is there any way to make this work so that the "save session" function only saves the tabs that are on the grouping window that you are running the extension from currently? So it doesn't save both "windows" of chrome I have open so I can actually save two separate project groupings at the same time?

Second thought:
It could use a little shining up in the Save/save as department. I saved Gtan (4 tabs) and like I said, I'd realized it'd saved my chrome project windows too.. so I closed ALL tabs except the 4 gtan tabs... then saved session Gtan over again. It made a second session with an identical name. So I was thinking... it either needs the ability to UPDATE a session and save the changes you've made to it, or the ability to automatically add an identifier to a second session saved with an identical name (such as: gtan(1) like we see with saving multiple copies of images). Is either of these possible? I'd deeply prefer that it updated the session, personally, but...

Also, a feature I would love to see implemented would be optional (toggle on off in settings or something) date stamping on the sessions so when I look at my session list:

gtan 8-19-09
chrome project 8-18-09

etc... so I know how old that session is, when I last worked with it, etc.

Hope this helps and thanks again for a great great great extension!

08-20-2009, 05:39 AM

twinsen

0.15 is released that has save current window only, and close saved tabs options.
This allows you to have multiple window sets for different tasks saved separately, and when you save you don't have to manually close each tab.

08-20-2009, 06:46 AM

arsieiuni

Oh wow! Just added feature or did I just not notice it?

Well I'm trying to help test this, but I'm new guys okay? Please don't hold it against me! I want to help is all.